User blog comment:Trevastyah/Mistakes done by beginners in competative./@comment-31722743-20170412025730/@comment-30155146-20170412050426

2 things:

Ash and Protean have diffrent roles:

Ash is designed to threaten sweeps, after it's counters have been removed.

The reason why you think that picking ash itself is a mistake is that noobs lead with Ash (X and Y anime) and promptly run into set counters which most people used to common teams have.

Protean is designed to break past typing that the rest of your team has trouble with or set up entry hazards.

Protean is pretty hard to get in PBB, and usually the people who used it have built their teams with this role in mind.

Second thing is the X and Y:

X is supposed to tank blows with its typing until it's dragondances have been set, making it a pretty good physical attacker.

The reason why this ends up being noob is because people run spatk moves.

Y is supposed to immediatly use it's weather ability to blast through and run when any hardcounters appear.

I would in fact say Y is simply easier to use.